MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

7/18 Trade talks

The Cubs’ best trade chips may be pitchers Ryan Dempster and Matt Garza but one of the team’s goals heading into the Trade Deadline is to continue to improve the organization’s pitching. Theo Epstein, Cubs president of baseball operations, said calls have picked up as the July 31 deadline approaches.

“You can express a preference for pitching,” Epstein said, “but if we’re dealing with a club that has better position player prospects or we feel position players in a certain system are a safer bet or offer a higher upside, I don’t think it’s fair to pigeon hole yourself to one situation.

“As a whole, not specifically regarding these potential deals that are upcoming, we need to add a lot of pitching to the system,” Epstein said. “It’s not enough to have a handful. We need to have waves and waves coming into the system. We don’t have that. We hardly have one wave. We need to build a lot of pitching depth.”

Epstein said they will not make trades “for the sake of making moves,” adding “they have to put us in a better position.”

Dempster, who will be a free agent at the end of the season, is reportedly drawing interest from several teams, including the Dodgers. He has 10 years in the Major Leagues and five with one team, so he can veto any deal. Epstein would not reveal which teams Dempster favored. Garza, on the other hand, would be under a team’s control through 2013. Right now, the Cubs are looking to the future.

“It’s an opportunity,” Epstein said of the Trading Deadline. “We want to make the most of it. We wish we were looking to add and hopefully in the years going forward we’ll play better in the first three, four months of the season and be in a position to add going into the playoffs.”

— Carrie Muskat

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13 Comments

I like what Theo expressed there. He is taking an intelligent approach to improving the team. Building pitching depth and making meaningful decisions regarding position players is the way to move forward. The tricky aspect of this is targeting prospects who can eventually succeed in The Show and not wash out or result in having marginal success.

meh I don’t think anyone could have predicted Colvin would have as good a sophmore year as he is having, and it might even have something to do with the park he’s in now. But he was batting like .140 last year. His slugging wasn’t much better, and we had no real 3B at the time. Unfortunately trades don’t always work out for both sides. At least we have Valbuena for now. Nice job by FO getting him off waivers.

Colvin deserved more time with the Cubs to recover from his stake in the heart injury. No predictions of him hitting .300 were needed. Stewart was a gamble by a new GM and it was ill-advised. But like Jesse stated…”meh”, nothing to lose sleep over but Colvin would have saved the Cubs the DeJesus money/contract. That being the biggest benefit in keeping him. And 3B?? Could have given Valbuena the shot from day one or rolled the dice with Vitters, giving him his “put up, or shut up” opportunity.
So far Stewart is a bust and DeJesus is, well….another “meh” in the loooooong list of Cub “mehs”.

Colvin would not have saved the DeJesus money…. we needed a CF and leadoff… neither of which Colvin could do. Colvin was surplus talent we tried to flip for some 3B help… it didn’t work out but we also wouldn’t have room for Colvin unless we were going to get rid of Reed (not an everyday CF) or Baker (utility guy) or Mather (utility guy). Vitters wasn’t ready… is just starting to put it together in AAA. Let the guy tear it up in AAA like Rizzo so he is ready when we ACTUALLY need him.

DeJesus is no answer to leadoff either. No way. Even with his “decent” OBP. Money would have been saved if Colvin played right, more power, more RBI. Johnson and Campana (and maybe an unknown??) would have done more than fine in CF AND as a better leadoff men then DeJesus especially with Johnson getting the majority of playing time to the point of keeping fresh as he is not an everyday player but still has his defense going much more so than DeJesus. Bye Bye Castro??? With Vitters and Valbuena??? Jesse, I’m all for bringing up Vitters (supportin my no reason to trade Colvin for Stewart thought) but launching Casto is severe and just, just, well I won’t go there like some people. We needed a third baseman all season more so than a first baseman…

lol i was just messing around. Barney had some awesome base running today. and any chance we can keep Johnson. He’s got some great D and his offense has picked up too since moving closer to the plate. Not a bad arm out there either. Great win today. Go Cubbies!

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